Is it just me, or is The Last Boy Scout Bruce Willis' best film? - whitehishly

Is it just me, OR is The Subterminal Boy Scout Bruce Willis' superior film?

Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis in The Last Boy Scout (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

If Bruce Willis had been a star in the '40s and '50s, he'd have been a staple of flic noirs – the tough, smart-mouthed galosh with a code of laurels hidden beneath corrosive cynicism. Sin City recognised this, casting him as tec John Hartigan, stoic and sardonic. Merely IT's 1991 action-thriller The Last Boy Scout – backhand by Shane Black, directed by Tony Scott – that supplies his perfect role.

"What about John McClane?" you ask. Maybe, if four variable sequels hadn't left his record so tarnished; his vest looks pristine in comparison. And besides, I've always preferred Pathfinder to the original Die Hard.

Partly it's the knowing noir touches, as Willis' flea-bitten P.I. Joe Hallenbeck smokes and drinks and chases downward a case involving an stripper (Halle Berry), a dead partner, few railroad car bombs, a corrupt senator and gaming in major conference football.

Partly information technology's the glazed natural process (the rain-lashed football match that turns shockingly violent, the car in the naiant pool, the shoote-in-the-hand-puppet shootout), masterfully edited by the best cutter in the action business, Stuart Baird.

Just by and large it's the crackerjack wisecracks batted between Joe and Jimmy Dorothea Dix (Damon Wayans), the disgraced erstwhile football genius who finds himself riding shotgun on the case. "Risk's my middle name," Jimmy grins at Joe. "Mine's Cornelius. Tell anyone, I'll kill you," comes the half-serious reply.

Die Hard — (Image credit: 20th One C Fox)

Whereas Prevail is confined to the Nakatomi Piazza, Scout earns its rambling badge traversing Atomic number 57: night-time alleys, all steam and neon, and solarise-soaked streets. "Water's wet, the sky is blue, women have secrets – who gives a fuck?" is Joe's motto, merely Scott, a master stylist, gives us orange sunsets and blue-filtered interiors.

True, there's something quite sour about Joe's female relationships – his wife is having an intimacy; his 13-twelvemonth-old girl regularly calls him "fuck-up" and "asshole" – but here, as elsewhere, the timbre is matchless of self-sensible excess. Inkiness and Dred Scott are taking noir to the nth degree.

Think Bogie's Philip Marlowe subtraction the Arthur Garfield Hays Code, plus bivalent-fisted gunplay. Hell, the fact that the whole film is gloriously OTT makes it glorious, period. Or is it just Maine?